


Never Meant to be That Free

by tebtosca



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 16:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tebtosca/pseuds/tebtosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean gets sick, in more ways than one. Sam helps him through it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Meant to be That Free

Bobby dies and Dean takes off. He’s burned the bones of one father and he won’t be the one to do it again.

He’s about three hours out when he stops at a roadside bar in search of oblivion. A hot little bartender with Lisa’s hair and Sam’s eyes leans over the bar with a smirk and a shot of Johnnie Walker and Dean takes it gratefully. He knocks it back in one go and pushes in close, smells her too-sweet perfume, the burn of it and the liquor in his nostrils. He smiles the smile that has worked since he was young and dumb and thought that knowing about the things that go bump in the night meant that he was a hero.

“How’d you do that?” the bartender asks, pointing down at the hand that he busted punching a plane of glass to intimidate some poor schmuck who was just doing his job.

Dean stops smiling, closes his eyes for a second. Mumbles.“It doesn’t matter.”

He makes it back to the motel room where he left Sam in a little over two hours and forty four minutes. Sam’s still there, sitting calmly on the bed, boots off and face sad. He stares at Dean like he knew that he’d return. Kid’s got more faith than Dean’s ever had about things like that.

“Feel better?” Sam asks, and Dean searches for the mockery in the tone but finds none.

Dean swipes a hand over the prickly beard growth on his face and huffs. Heads to the bathroom to take a shower without a word. Sam lets him go.

++++++

The next day Sam insists on patching up the wounds that reopened on Dean’s hand. Dean fights him for a minute but is finally too tired to keep it up. He sits on the closed lid of the toilet seat, Sam’s entire long body folded into itself as he kneels on the tile in front of him.

Dean remembers the summer Sam shot up, all gawky limbs and aching muscles. Dad didn’t let up on training, even when Sam’s eyes would fill with angry, hurt tears every time Dean sparred with him. The tears never fell though, so Dean never said anything and just kept going. Sam didn’t talk a lot that summer and Dean refrained as well. He didn’t know whether “I’m proud of you” or “I’m sorry, Sammy” would hurt worse.

Sam pours the mini bottle of hydrogen peroxide over the open cuts on Dean’s knuckles, and it sizzles, white foam burning out the bad stuff. Dean grits his teeth, turns his face away from Sam’s calm one.

“Does it hurt?” Sam asks. Dean knows he’s not talking about the burn.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dean says again, and means it, mostly.

Sam’s silent for a moment as he wipes the wounds almost tenderly. He cradles Dean’s hand in his, the one with the scar, the security blanket that keeps the devil pushed firmly in the corner of the room. Dean sees it in his peripheral vision and swallows hard.

“Of course it matters,” Sam corrects softly, wrapping the new gauze and walking out of the bathroom.

++++++

Dean’s first instinct is for vengeance. Fly down the highway with a trunk full of Borax and a couple of machetes, ready to fuck Dick Roman and his merry band of sea monsters in a symphony of black blood and broken necks.

Then Dean looks at Sam. Thinks of what vengeance made him become and how much of himself Sam lost as he sought redemption. Dean thinks of their Dad, of love drilled out by grief, the needs of two little boys trumped by obsession.

Dean’s second instinct is to know better, and for once he goes with that one.

++++++

They exist.

A vampire coven in New Orleans. A chupacabra in El Paso. One really foul-smelling ghoul in Nebraska.

It’s that last one that finally fucks them up and stops the cycle of numbness.

The ghoul gets a nice swipe into Dean’s arm, and it cuts right through the layers of material to land an almost bone deep laceration. Sam patches him up back at the motel as Dean guzzles whiskey and grits his teeth through the pain of the make-shift stitches.

“This is pretty deep, Dean,” Sam says, eyes concerned through their exhaustion.

Dean’s on the edge of drunk, and still mad at himself for letting the ghoul get him at all. The last thing he needs is Sam making puppy eyes at him like that.

“It’s fine,” Dean grumbles, pushing Sam off of him and passing out cold. He remembers to fall into the bed closest to the door because even while drunk Dean’s instincts hold.

Two days later, the world shifts, and Dean collapses a few steps from the doorway of an abandoned cabin off-the-grid that Frank Devereaux found for them to stow away in.

He wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later. His vision is blurry and he has no idea at first where he is. His body is wracked with cold shudders even as his skin sizzles. It’s like hell, he thinks suddenly, hysterically, the dichotomy of fire and ice.

"Let me take care of you," Sam pleads, hand on the burning skin of Dean's neck.

 _That's my job, Sammy,_ Dean thinks through the haze. _Don't take it from me ‘cause it's all I have left._

++++++

Dean feels a thumb pressing his mouth open, feels the rough pad of skin scrape against his bottom lip, the ridge of his gums, his tongue. _Sam,_ he thinks, he hopes, keeping his eyes closed and remembering.

“Gotta open up, Dean, I managed to get you some antibiotics.”

The voice is tinny, but the tone and cadence is familiar, and Dean opens for it, like a communion. A dry object is being placed against his tongue and Dean coughs. A hand cradles his neck and suddenly cool liquid is trickling down Dean’s throat.

“That’s it, Dean. Go back to sleep.”

Dean does.

++++++

The third time Dean opens his eyes, the world is a little brighter. His skin still feels like he’s been in a sauna too long, but there is a wash cloth cooling on his forehead and Sam is curled up next to him, sound asleep.

Dean lets himself touch, stroking his hand down Sam’s face. Sam’s mouth is lazy with sleep, a tiny space open between his slack lips, and Dean rubs his fingers over their outline.

Sam stirs, and Dean pulls his hand back quick enough to make himself dizzy. Closes his eyes again and starts shifting away from his brother.

“Stop,” Sam’s voice cuts through the silence. Sam pulls Dean’s body back towards him. Their combined heat bleeds into each other, and Dean wonders who really has the fever.

“Stay with me this time.”

++++++

Dean kissed his brother on the mouth for the first time in the back of a bus station. Sam got on the bus to California anyway and Dean fucked a waitress viciously against a brick wall four hours later, only just stopping when she said he was hurting her.

The night before Dean left Sam for the very first time, Dean crawled into Sam's bed. Dean wrapped arms and legs around his brother and let Sam take what he needed. He wiped tears and sweat and come from their bodies before pretending to sleep for the last time before the hellhounds came.

Dean let Sam fuck him into a dirty motel mattress the night he found out Sam had somehow managed to crawl his way out of the Cage. Dean was so damn happy to have his brother back that he couldn't even bring himself to care that Sam's hand was bruising the back of his neck or that Ben was off alone in his room somewhere, probably needing help with his homework. Didn’t recognize that his brother was an empty shell and that he didn't have him back at all.

He feels disgusted enough with himself over that last fact that he hasn't let Sam touch him since.

++++++

Sam makes the decision for him, probably because Dean’s too weak to make himself resist. Sam lays his head against Dean’s chest, ear over heartbeat, and slides one big hand under Dean’s t-shirt to rub the skin of his belly.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, either,” Sam says softly, fingers prickling the tiny hair around Dean’s bellybutton. They go around and around in circles, tiny goosebumps rising on Dean’s flesh.

Dean doesn’t answer, but he pulls the suddenly-heavy weight of his arm up to wrap his fingers in Sam’s damp hair. Dean can feel Sam’s eyes close, the flutter of his eyelashes tickling Dean’s skin even through cotton.

Sam presses his face into Dean’s chest as his hand slides lower and feels the half-hard outline of Dean’s dick through his boxers. Someone moans, and Dean suspects it’s him and not Sam who made the sound.

“Let me?” Sam asks, nosing Dean’s t-shirt up until his hot breath is seeping into Dean’s already flushed skin.

“Always,” Dean replies simply, and it’s strange how the cloud covering his brain from the sickness is suddenly allowing him to see clearer than he has in months.

Sam’s fingertips pull up the edges of Dean’s boxers, going so slowly that Dean wants to shove his hips up and force them to do more. Sam’s hand finally slides inside and wrap loosely around Dean’s dick, tugging it gently, probably remembering the weight of it in its palm. Dean shivers and he’s not sure whether it’s from the infection or the way Sam is stroking his thumb over the precome leaking from the head of his cock.

Dean rests his head against the pillow as material is tugged down, letting his dick bob free. Sam mouths at the crown, balancing just the tip of it on his tongue. His hand is stroking Dean’s thigh, kneading the hot flesh, and coming just close enough to Dean’s balls that they ache for touch.

“C’mon, man,” Dean mumbles, eyes blurry, skin tight. He runs his nails down the parts of Sam that he can reach, but it’s not enough.

“It’s okay, Dean, it’s okay,” Sam repeats over and over again, around where he suckling the head of Dean’s cock. His index finger rubs dry and scratchy over Dean’s hole, and Dean bucks into it involuntarily.

Sam pulls off his cock and Dean lets out a whine that he’d probably deny later. Sam chuckles and spits on his own fingers before sliding them down into the crevice between Dean’s legs and sliding one of them right into him.

Dean grunts at the intrusion, and star bursts flicker over his vision from the tiny slice of pain.

“So warm, fuck,” Sam mumbles, licking his way down Dean’s cock and then back again. He waits only a beat before he starts moving his finger in tiny little strokes.

Sam’s other finger teases the rim, asking permission, and Dean grants it by opening his legs as wide as he can, reaching past the deep weight of exhaustion that seems to be holding down his limbs. Sam doesn’t hesitate, and presses in with two fingers.

Dean cries out when Sam crooks them just so, and his body is vibrating from the sensation when Sam starts stroking his prostate. Sam growls, sucking Dean’s dick into his mouth as he kneads Dean’s insides.

It’s too much, too soon, and Dean feels like he’s falling.

His mind clears and he realizes that Sam will catch him.

He comes almost violently, and Sam licks up every drop. After he pulls off, he kisses Dean’s belly softly. Lovingly. Dean sucks in a breath; lets it out.

Sam curls around him, and Dean can feel the hard press of Sam’s erection against his own flushed skin. “Let me take care of that,” Dean mumbles, eyes growing heavy.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam insists.

“Of course it matters.”

Sam huffs a laugh into the back of Dean’s neck; follows the breath with a kiss. Dean closes his eyes and lets sleep take him.

++++++

Two days later, when Dean is able to walk without swaying, they get into the Impala and drive. Sam fills Dean’s flask with Gatorade when he’s not looking. Dean throws a pack of Slim Jims at his head.

The road is long. They go on.


End file.
